1. Field of the Invention
The invention generally relates to the field of computer sensors and, more specifically, to a system and method of biometric enrollment devices and remote enrollment using the enrollment devices.
2. Background Description
Security concerns and verification of an individual's identity has become a significant issue for many institutions, employers, and the like. For example, a bank may wish to verify the identity of an individual accessing an account or service. Often access to accounts, services, or facilities relies extensively on passwords or personal identification numbers (PIN). However, biometric information has become more prevalent in replacing or supplementing identification verification.
As a consequence of a more widespread use of biometrics, and as biometric databases become accordingly larger, enrollment into the databases becomes an increasingly difficult problem. Enrollment typically has been a labor intensive and somewhat skilled operation often limited by the availability of staff, time, and relatively complicated hardware.
Currently, institutions wishing to enroll large numbers of people generally require them to travel to a designated location (e.g., Department of Motor Vehicles or bank branch) for enrollment using approved hardware and skilled operators. This is often inconvenient for the enrollee and expensive in terms of time and costs. Some aspects of using these existing enrollment methods include, for example:
(i) Use of bulky hardware;
(ii) Requirement of skilled operators for performing the enrollment; and
(iii) Necessity of the enrollee traveling to an enrollment site.
Some institutions such as banks have experimented with an “inkless paper” enrollment mechanism, for example, a method of making permanent images (e.g., fingerprints) on a recording surface having a thermo sensitive color-developing layer or methods using multi-chemical recording surfaces. The special chemical paper (i.e., “ink-less paper”) is mailed to the customers/enrollees who mail back the fingerprints for subsequent scanning. Similarly, some authorities (e.g., Immigration and Naturalization Service or UK Passport Agency) remotely enroll users in a facial image biometric database, requiring the users to send a photograph. The photography, however, must match strict institutional guidelines on size, head pose, illumination, paper type etc. which may require the user/enrollee to travel to a designated place to have the image taken.
Remote enrollment may also be carried out by telephone using speaker identification systems (i.e., voice printing), though this necessarily implies that the speech may be corrupted by channel characteristics and noise.
The invention provides an electronic device and method for remote enrollment that has significant advantages over existing methods of enrollment into biometric databases.